Desktop in a rig

I seriously doubt the components on the mother board would stand up to the constant vibration and shaking going down the road. I used to run a show rig for a motorcycle manufacturer and the sound system was controlled by a fairly high end desktop but every few months I had to pull it out and have it repaired because something else shook loose from the main board. Finally the manufacturer of the sound system replaced it with a laptop and to this day it's still functioning fine (I still talk to the current owner when he has problems with other systems in the trailer). Granted it rode inside the trailer but both the truck and trailer were air ride.

There's a lot of components on a mother board that are comparatively heavy and will try and tear themselves from the board all day long. As for liquid cooling, do you really want to take a chance that a line will work loose and spill glycol all over the inside of your case? I ran liquid cooling at home but it was for show because I could get within 10 degrees on air cooling. I sure wouldn't want the headache of trying to maintain a liquid system in a truck.

There are gaming laptops that come awfully close to desktop performance and they'll withstand a lot more.

 

You don't want a desktop in a big truck. The computer's power supply is not going to like the truck's power supply. You will have a power supply go bad or a fried CPU and/or GPU within a month. Mobile computers have a self-regulated power supply (battery buffer) and can deal with radical input power changes, surges, drops, etc. The 1000+ watt power supplies on gaming machines are real particular about the quality and amount of current coming into them.

 

it's not just the board and power supply, it's every component inside the case. hard drives can't take the pounding either.

don't know where you guys keep your laptops, but mine sits on the seat, lotsa cushion.

 

^ What they said.

Also, don't know if you've ever liquid cooled or not, but those are not sealed systems. They require regular maintenance - draining, cleaning and refilling. Kind of a mess OTR.

No computers - even laptops- are going to take the punishment of being in a truck for long. The vibration is a killer. That's not to say I don't have a lappy in the truck, hubby does, too. He bought the high-speed low drag gaming lappy a few years(5) back and the DVD drive busted within a few months. My little $700 hunk of junk we bought the same day is finally starting to go wonky, too. I'm getting intermittent shorts on the motherboard.

The high end, good stuff stays at home. I was just starting to shop around for a new lappy myself.

 

i just stick with the cheapest laptop i can find. my hp is going on 2 1/2 years now. bought it at wally for $200. on sale at the time.

 

It's the type of power that's the problem. Not even (necessarily) the size of the inverter. Desktop computer power supplies are touchy about using DC current. Even when you use an inverter, the direct-to-alternating current conversion isn't clean. The waves can be 'too close' or 'too far' apart for the power supply to use. It causes excess wear and tear on your power supply. When the power supply goes, you run the risk of frying the board, the cpu, the gpu...well, anything in there, really.

On my machine (cough...baby...cough) at home, I run a 1500 watt power supply. So, in my case a 1500w wouldn't work. Remember you also have to plug in your monitor and other things. At home I run those all on a UPS system to avoid brown outs and power surges.